Here it is: no. no no no. NO NO NO. NOOOOOO!!!!
We haven't talked about it in class yet but I suppose it's up for discussion on the blogs. Beyond the purely emotional reaction as worded so eloquently above, I have deeply seated objections to the legitimate use of torture of the death penalty.
I will use a term that seems unphilosophical but in fact gets across exactly why I object. This term is 'barbaric.' The act of torture is barbaric in precisely the way that the more sophisticated Roman civilization thought the human sacrifice of Druids in Britain was barbaric, because it was incompatible with their civilization and they had found a better way to live. The metaphor goes even further and shows how we have plenty of atrocities beyond torture that we have very few qualms with, the same way the Romans carried out mass murder and genocide but for some reason found human sacrifice barbaric. But I digress.
We don't want torture to ever be acceptable, and as in my last post, I disagree with legitimizing it as a means to extract information because it could lead to the far more dangerous means to extract revenge. In effect, legalizing torture in any situation would be a hugely regressive policy.
We haven't talked about it in class yet but I suppose it's up for discussion on the blogs. Beyond the purely emotional reaction as worded so eloquently above, I have deeply seated objections to the legitimate use of torture of the death penalty.
I will use a term that seems unphilosophical but in fact gets across exactly why I object. This term is 'barbaric.' The act of torture is barbaric in precisely the way that the more sophisticated Roman civilization thought the human sacrifice of Druids in Britain was barbaric, because it was incompatible with their civilization and they had found a better way to live. The metaphor goes even further and shows how we have plenty of atrocities beyond torture that we have very few qualms with, the same way the Romans carried out mass murder and genocide but for some reason found human sacrifice barbaric. But I digress.
We don't want torture to ever be acceptable, and as in my last post, I disagree with legitimizing it as a means to extract information because it could lead to the far more dangerous means to extract revenge. In effect, legalizing torture in any situation would be a hugely regressive policy.
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